New articles on your business website

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Do you have a business, online or bricks and mortar, or a small home business that you wish to promote better? Do you have a hobby or craft that you engage in regularly and want to write about? Why not consider writing your own newsletter. It’s a great way to communicate with your current customers. It’s also a platform to promote what you are interested in to others with like interests.

The key to a successful newsletter is to impart useful information to readers of the publication

You do not want your newsletter to come across as one giant commercial. You do want to promote your business in general and your products/services, home business, hobby or craft interests in particular. However, you want to be careful that you are not just distributing a four-page version of one of your advertisements.

If people want to read ads, they will read ads; they know where to find them. When they want detailed information, tips, updates, and news about a business they will read a newsletter. They know a newsletter goes beyond advertising and is more journalistic in nature. This is what you want to strive for when you create your own version.

Here are five tips for creating a compelling newsletter that informs as well as entertains your readers:

Short is Better

Newsletters are an ultra pared down version of a newspaper or magazine. Therefore, keep your articles short in length. In addition, don’t have long rambling sentences and paragraphs as part of your content. Strive for an article length of approximately four hundred words. This will be the feature article of your newsletter. Mix in some short one and two hundred word pieces as well.

Use Case Studies, Profiles, Quotes, Success Stories

Include a short article that is a case study in your newsletter. This will be about a particular product or service you offer. It will give some detail on how the product or service can benefit a user. The same with success stories; highlight how other customers found that your product or service provided solutions they needed. People love to read about how something they are considering benefited others.

You may also want to profile one of your employees in a company newsletter (if you own or manage a small business). This employee may be one whom customers have contact with regularly. This puts the people aspect of your business to the forefront and gives your business that human touch. People like to know more about whom they deal with on a regular basis.

If you’re talking about a particular aspect of your business, include quotes from experts. For example, you may want to highlight how a product is new and improved. Have a quote from a person responsible for developing the product. They may say something like, “Because of our new technology we were able to increase the efficiency of the product by 45 percent”, or something along those lines. It’s your way of giving the detailed information and statistics behind what is going on in your business.

Make it Appealing and Newsworthy Looking

You will make your newsletter easy-to-read by having a good mix of headlines, sub headlines, sidebars, bullet points, and text boxes. This helps break up larger blocks of text. This gives a little white space to your total content. This allows for easier reading and scanning and presents information in an organized manner.

Make your newsletter look like a news piece. Do not have it flash and sparkle like a flamboyant TV advertisement. Remember, you’re conveying useful content to inform and educate your audience. Present it wrapped in a journalistic, hard news persona, done attractively and professionally of course.

Write What Your Readers Want

You may write a great piece that no one wants to read. It’s important to understand your target market. Know what they’re looking for on topics related to your business. This is where market research comes in. You may want to inquire of customers in the form of a questionnaire as to what they would like you to cover in future newsletters. You can then tailor your content accordingly.

Use Photos, Graphics, Charts

Sometimes you can convey substantial information succinctly with photos, graphics, and charts accompanying your written words. These elements of a newsletter are precise, concise, and direct. Make sure you label each photo, graph or chart appropriately so readers know what you are trying to get across to them. Photos, graphics, and charts add variety to a newsletter and are complementary to the well-written text.

Coming up with your own newsletter can open the doors of communication with those interested in the same topics you are. Done with professionalism they can present your business or interests in a new way. A quality newsletter can develop a loyal following, which can translate into long-term readers interested in what you have to say.